Forest Products and the Environment

Forest Products and the Environment

You can improve your environmental impact by choosing wood.

When you think about the environmental impact of a product, you need to think of every stage of its production from the making of the product to its disposal. Through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) all the environmental impacts are considered to make a product and compared with other materials. Wood is found to have the clear environmental advantage. Wood uses less energy in production, produces less air and water pollution, is renewable, and its overall carbon footprint is lower. These are all important factors to be considered when doing an LCA.

Wood also is a great insulator, which is important when most houses are made of wood. This can mean lower heating and cooling bills. It is also a carbon friendly choice, with wood products locking up carbon for years. Most importantly, because wood is a renewable resource we know that if we manage it in a good way that we will have resources for generations.

#ItTakesAForest

“It Takes a Forest” is an initiative led by Forests Ontario in partnership with local, like-minded individuals and organizations with a common goal of providing the public with unbiased, fact-based information on Ontario’s forest sector and the role of our forests as one of the province’s most sustainable resources.